Chinese citizens laid flowers on the Google logo at the company's headquarters in support of the company's decision to stand up to the Chinese government's censorship (Source: Vincent Thian/Associated Press)

In response to Google's decision to uncensor its search, the Chinese government is accusing Google of espionage and attempting to kick Google's Android OS out of China's phone market. (Source: Leakdroid.com)

Google President Brin urges President Obama respond to Chinese action and statements

According
to the Chinese government, the U.S. is committing a campaign of
cyberwarfare against it (its claims echo those voiced by top U.S.
armed forces officials, who conversely claim China is
carrying out a cyberwarfare effort against the U.S.).

People’s
Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, on
Wednesday unleashed serious accusations against Google. In a
front-page piece it claims that Google, the second largest search
engine in China, and one of the largest companies in the U.S.,
is colluding
with U.S. espionage efforts.

Writes the paper:

For
Chinese people, Google is not god, and even if it puts on a full-on
show about politics and values, it is still not god. In fact,
Google is not a virgin when it comes to values. Its cooperation and
collusion with the U.S. intelligence and security agencies is
well-known...All this makes one wonder. Thinking about the United
States’ big efforts in recent years to engage in Internet war,
perhaps this could be an exploratory pre-dawn battle.

The
editorial follows Google's Monday decision to stand up to the Chinese
government. Fed up with cybercrime in China and the country's
policy of censoring internet access to a variety of materials, Google
defied Chinese regulators by uncensoring
its search results in China. It redirected Chinese visitors
from google.cn to its uncensored Hong Kong search site. The
Hong Kong site uses the same simplified Chinese characters that the
mainland uses and thus is readable to those in mainland China.

As
of Tuesday the site was still not blocked, but most observers believe
that the Chinese government will move to block google.cn or
google.com.hk. Some are astounded at the move by Google.
Former U.S. ambassador to China J.
Stapleton Roy, director of the Kissinger Institute on China and
the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for
Scholars, states, "I don’t understand their calculation.
I do not see how Google could have concluded that they could have
faced down the Chinese on a domestic censorship issue."

Google
could pay deeply for the move. China is home to over 155
million smart phone users and that number is growing rapidly.
Contrary to its previous
statements, the Chinese government is now moving to ban Google's
Android handsets from China. It is reportedly pressuring
telecoms like China Unicom to delay or scrap smart phone offerings
that use Google's Android OS. This could prove a boon to
Research in Motion and Apple, the latter of which has seen poor
sales of its iPhone in China.

The Chinese government
is also pushing telecoms to terminate their search deals with Google,
which could boost Microsoft. Google is expected to lose its
31.3 percent search stake in China's internet market of over 350
million users -- more users than the entire population of the
U.S.

The accusations of espionage could also result in charges
against Google's 600 China employees. Google is fearful of this
and was careful to say that none of its Chinese employees were
involved in the decision to uncensor the search. Chinese courts
might not accept that claim, though.

Google co-founder and
president Sergey Brin knows a little about what its like to grow up
in an oppressive communist regime. Brin was born in 1973 in
Soviet Russia, but later attended college at Stanford University --
where he met fellow Google co-founder Larry Page.

Brin says
that the Obama administration should take action against China rather
than avoid the issue. He stated in an
interview with the UK newspaper Guardian,
"I certainly hope they make it a high priority. Human
rights issues deserve equal time to the trade issues that are high
priority now … I hope this gets taken seriously. Since
services and information are our most successful exports, if
regulations in China effectively prevent us from being competitive,
then they are a trade barrier.

And Brin had some stinging
criticism of U.S. rival Microsoft, who has vowed to
continue censoring its Chinese search, in cooperation with the
government of China. Says Brin, "I'm very disappointed for
them in particular. As I understand, they have effectively no market
share – so they essentially spoke against freedom of speech and
human rights simply in order to contradict Google."

In
China many people are celebrating Google's decision to stand up
against censorship. The logo in front of Google's headquarters
was covered in flowers left by supporters. That
support, though, may only serve to further anger Chinese regulators.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

Google is just acting like what most American does best --- trash talk + blame the others while taking advantage of the said party.

If they're so full of themselves, why don't they gtfo of China completely ? Oh yeah, Cuz they're making billions every year out of China. Communist is evil right? why are you doing business there then ?